So you got a new Android smartphone and you want to transfer all important data from your old Symbian phone to it. We know how much important is that old data in your old Symbian phone. So generally there are many sites and online services which help you to transfer all the data like Contacts, Calendar entries, Notes, Images, Songs and even SMS to your new Android smartphone but at a very premium price.
Well we can easily transfer Contacts, Notes, Calendar entries, Photos and Songs from Symbian to Android but real problem comes for SMS ! There is really nothing any easy application that will directly transfer all your valuable SMS from Symbian phones to Android phones for free! So what to do? Many of us including me faced this big issue for transferring all SMS to Android phones. Most of us either simply sacrificed all those SMS or some still use that old phone for accessing those important SMS !
I searched a lot on the Internet for the easy solution where Rooting is not required of Android Phone but didn’t get easy solution which can be used by any end user and for free! But finally found a solution from some archived threads of XDA Forums.
Steps for Nokia Symbian Phone:
1. Copy all your contacts from your old Nokia Symbian phone to Android Phone as it is by various methods like, Syncing to Outlook etc. If its already done please skip this step.
2. Now download and install Latest Ovi Suite for your Nokia phone from here. http://bit.ly/lB5bTn
3. After installing Nokia Ovi Suite and detecting your Nokia Phone, Please Sync all SMS in Ovi Suite. Remember Sync it and no need of OVI Suite backup of your Nokia Symbian Phone!
4. Disconnect your Nokia Phone and close the Nokia OVI Suite application. WATCH OUT! Nokia OVI Suite likes to minimize to system tray please be sure that its also closed from the System Tray of Windows.
5. Download Nokia2AndroidSMS from the given link and extract all files to Folder called Nokia2AndroidSMS. http://www.mediafire.com/?vmdddmp4ga9sq6x
6. Run Nokia2AndroidSMS.exe extracted from Nokia2AndroidSMS.7z; you will need 7zip for extraction. http://www.7-zip.org/download.html
7. The application should automatically find all Data-stores created by Nokia OVI Suite and automatically select the first one.
8. If it should fail to detect Data-stores then you’ll have to find it by yourself, you can either drag and drop Data-store file from Windows Explorer onto the Nokia2AndroidSMS window or use the Open button to find it.
9. You can change the Data-store in the 1st selection list if there is more than one.
10. If you have more than one phone in the Data-store than you can select for which you’d like to export the messages, they are listed by their IMEI number.
11. Press Convert button and now you should get an xml file in the same folder you extracted Nokia2AndroidSMS application.
Steps for Android Phone:
1. Install ‘SMS Backup & Restore’ from Android Market. Or check the link http://bit.ly/hSNLDm Author of the App: Ritesh Sahu.
2. Connect your Android phone to the PC by using supplied Micro-USB Cable. (You MUST select Disk drive as connection type).
3. Now copy the xml file (which was created after Step 11) into the ‘SMSBackupRestore’ Folder on the phone, (Please create it if it’s not already made by the App in your Android phone’s Mass Storage or Memory Card).
4. Now simply Run SMS Backup & Restore and click on ‘Restore’ button to import messages.
5. After importing all SMS it will create threads as per contacts in your Android phone’s default SMS application.
6. Enjoy!
I was able to transfer whopping 2141 messages (SMS) from my Nokia N8 to my new Samsung Galaxy SII within 10 minutes. What I liked with this Android app called SMS Backup & Restore that it also created accurate threads of my SMS conversations from my Nokia N8.
Enjoy and if you are stuck don’t hesitate to ping @gauravh1 on twitter